Urban Meyer has a track record of picking up a better recruit when an OSU commit ends up de-committing. We lost out on Ben Edwards, but it appears Meyers and Ash are closing in on the top safety in the country per Rivals.com
Skull Session: Southern Swing Day 4 Reply
Assessing chances with Roundtree
Some pretty big news came out of today's leg of our Southern Swing when we stopped by Evans (Ga.) Lakeside High School and spoke with five-star prospect Rashad Roundtree. The nation's top safety prospect told us back at the end of March that he would be making an official visit to Ohio State in the fall but when we spoke with him today, he told us that an extra visit is likely going to be squeezed in over the summer.
The unofficial visit would be huge for Ohio State chances. As I've said on here in the past with other prospects like Torrance Gibson, I just don't feel that only getting a kid on campus for an official visit is a realistic way to land prospects from the South. Is it impossible to land a kid that way? No. But take a look at the kids that Ohio State has pulled out of the South not only under Urban Meyer but under Jim Tressel, the vast majority of those kids made multiple visits to Ohio State during the course of their recruitments, usually an unofficial visit or two in the spring/summer followed by an official visit in the fall.
OhioState.Rivals.com released this article:
Getting Roundtree up twice would boost their chances from major long shot to a school that could legitimately contend here.
Now before everyone gets too excited, I do think Rashad is going to be a tough pull out of the Southeast. I think Georgia is in a pretty strong position right now and I think Auburn is another program that is going to be a serious contender. Roundtree is talking about making a visit to Auburn's big elite camp on May 31st where they often host a lot of commits and top targets and Roundtree is pretty tight some of the commits over there.
That being said, I definitely feel the interest in Ohio State is legitimate on Rashad's end. They always seem to get brought up with him and even some people in the South that we've spoken to feel the Buckeyes can be a player if they get him on campus for a visit. He speaks regularly with Chris Ash on Twitter and Ash was by the school recently so Ohio State is definitely recruiting him as hard as they can.
